I’ve always wondered what made people do the things they did.

Why did people eat processed foods even when it destroyed their energy for life?

Why did people refuse to workout even when it shortened their lives?

Why did people ignore sleep when it annihilated their motivation and mood?

It seemed like people weren’t able to connect the dots. Like they didn’t see the depths of the consequences their actions had on their lives.

The further I followed this line of questions – the more a realization opened up for me… 

Most people don’t realize they are the programmers of their lives. 

They can’t see how their daily actions influence the code of their being – their hormones.

No more do they understand that most of the code they are writing is malware.

People code themselves for depression, low energy, zero discipline, fat gain, emotional imbalances, infertility, anxiety and exhaustion — without realizing it.

All because they miss the connection between health and life — the interconnectedness of your lifestyle and the importance of not writing shitty code.

In other words, they don’t pay attention to the very thing that is writing their destiny.

And so they live life with buggy software.

The Bugs In Your Biology

Your life sucks because you’re unaware of how your daily actions are programming it.

Your health is the computer program responsible for running your life.

The code is your hormones.

They influence everything about how your mind and body works (all the way down to gene expression).

And as a result, they influence every aspect of how you live your life:

• Thyroid hormones determine body composition – as a result: your self image, confidence and the things you’re able to do in life

• Testosterone determine motivation and aspiration – as a result: the chance of you bringing your ideas and gifts into the world

• Adrenaline determines your mental energy – as a result: how well your mind works and your potential in life

Most people don’t realize how deep hormones influence their being.As a result, they live life with buggy software (hormonal imbalances).

They try to improve their lives and achieve things externally without realizing the problem lies within them.

When you code yourself for zero motivation – the thought of moving forward in life fills you with anxiety and you begin hiding from your dreams

When you code yourself for low energy – you don’t have the fuel to work and you can slam your head against the wall for hours without getting anything done

When you code yourself for obesity – you lose your belief in yourself and you start accepting a subpar life

When you’re running life on a faulty software – everything suffers.

Trying to improve your external life without first improving your internal health – is the same as trying to render 4K videos on a flip phone.

It won’t work.

The quality of a program will always determine the outcome.

Your health will always determine your life.

If you want to reach your goals – you can’t ignore the system that will take you there (or you’ll just get pulled back down).

If your life and potential is capped by the quality of your health.

And the quality of your health is capped by the quality of your hormonal system – your hormones determine the outputs of your life.

Whether it be relationships, mental health or success.

You can’t get exceptional output from a crappy program.

In the words of James Clear; “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems”

To do the things you want in life – you need a program that’s able to run it.

Enjoying the experience of life means having a health that doesn’t drag every waking moment down with it.

Getting more out of life means removing the bugs from your code.

If You Want A Better Life, Write Better Code

You are energy.

The universe is energy.

The process of life is literally channeling the energy of the universe through your body and into the world.

You channel the energy in food into energy your body can use (ATP) and then towards thinking, feeling, moving and doing anything at all.

Channeling energy is how you create things, how you accomplish your goals and how you experience life.

If life is energy, then the program that’s responsible for channeling it is what allows life itself.

• Your level of motivation

• Your quality of mind

• Your potential

When you write better code – you make the program of your life run smoothly.

You free up the trapped energy inside you and unlock a whole new way of life.

When your code isn’t buggy, your body doesn’t have to spend its energy just to overcome them.

You free up energy for the things that actually matter.

Think of decreasing the friction on a wheel axis.

The more smoothly your wheels can spin, the less energy is consumed just to overcome the initial friction.

And the more energy is freed up for using the car to get where you want to go.

If you want a better life, you need to improve the program you're running it on.

This all may sound a little philosophical – but it’s just the function of your metabolism.

Let me paint you a picture.

The Unignorability Of Metabolism

Your metabolism is probably the most important thing for health (and life).

In simple terms, it controls your flow of energy:

• Where it’s stored

• What it’s used for

• How much is created

If your health is the program that channels the energy of the universe – your metabolism is the quality of that program.

It’s how efficiently the energy is channeled through you (and what it’s used for).

Let me explain

1. Your metabolism controls your body composition:

• Muscle mass

• Bone density

• Body fat

How your body looks is a result of where your energy is being channeled.

The reason obesity has skyrocketed in recent years isn’t because we have more access to food or that we are more sedentary. It plays a part, but it’s not the whole reason.

The true reason is that people’s metabolism just sucks. Their bodies can’t use the energy from food efficiently and as a result, store it as fat.

On the contrary.

The higher your metabolism is – the more energy is used for repairing and building the body.

And the more fat is burned.

If you want to dive deep into the importance of metabolism for body composition, check out “how to lose fat without trying (and still enjoy life)”.

2. Your metabolism determines how your mind works:

• Mental energy

• Cognition

• Learning

Your brain consumes 75% of your energy.

When your metabolism actually works – you create enough energy (ATP) to fuel thinking, creativity and motivation.

You have more mental clarity, your mind becomes sharper and learning becomes easier.

You do better work, are more present and just enjoy life more.

3. Your metabolism determines your life:

• Lifespan

• Creative potential

• Potential social connections

One of the largest predictors of lifespan is metabolic health.

Meaning, having a healthier metabolism is the same as having more life.

If life is channeling the energy of the universe, then the thing that allows you to do that is a measure of how alive you are.

It’s how bright the flame of your life burns.

You can’t ignore your metabolism.

At least if you care about living a more full and enjoyable life.

Because it’s the essence of life.

Taking care of it is how you take the peculiar situation of being all in on this life thing – and turn it into the most magnificent game you could ever play.

Because do you have anything better to do?

The 6 Bio Commands

To code our biology we need a set of functions.

We need a set of bio-commands.

Because we’re interested in metabolism in this letter — there are 3 hormones we’ll focus on:

• Growth hormone

• Thyroid Hormone

• Testosterone

These 3 play a big role in controlling your metabolism and channeling of energy.

This is not to say that other hormones aren’t important – they are.

But for the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on metabolism and these 3.

Let’s list them all off. 

1. Growth Hormone

Growth hormone codes the development of your body.

It determines:

• Muscle mass

• Bone density

• Body fat

It also works in parallel with thyroid hormone and codes metabolism.

Increased growth hormone is associated with higher rates of mental function, injury repair, more energy and less stress.

2. Thyroid Hormone

Thyroid Hormone codes your metabolism and energy.

It determines:

• Energy usage

• Energy storage

• Energy creation (ATP)

Healthy levels of thyroid hormone gives you more energy, lower body fat and a longer life.

3. Testosterone

Testosterone codes your body composition and mental function.

It determines:

• How hard work feels

• How easy you put on muscle

• Your libido

High levels of testosterone makes effort feel good, annihilates depression and boosts motivation.

There are 6 natural bio commands that will optimize these hormones (and overall health).

By improving your hormones naturally, you unlock the luxury of having a high quality software to run your life on – without the negative effects that come from simply injecting them into your bloodstream.

So without further we do…

Let’s go over how to actually write better code.

1. The Calorie Function

One of the reasons people’s code sucks is because they don’t get enough energy from food.

If life is the process of channeling energy, and calories is your source of energy – then the quality of your life depends on getting enough calories.

This is the first and fundamental principle for optimizing hormones (it’s also the fundamental principle for being alive :)If you don’t get enough energy, you are rewriting your code.

You're telling your body that energy is a scarce resource. Your metabolism will slow down and your flame of life will dim.

Your hormones will become unbalanced, stress levels will go through the roof and life often loses its zest.

The biggest misunderstanding in the health industry is that calories make you fat.

No.

They’re your source of life.

What makes you fat is a broken metabolism (but we’ve already talked about this).

If you want to optimize your hormones, you first need to make sure that you’re getting enough calories.

You can use a calculator on the internet as a starting point – but you need to experiment.

The efficiency of your mitochondria can’t be measured with a calculator on the internet.

You need to experiment with more or less calories and notice how you feel.

If you want a guide for this, check out last week’s letter “Become a health polymath (if you want to thrive in life)”.

The first step to writing better code is getting enough energy.

The second step is where you get it from.

2. The Diet Line

To optimize your hormones, you need to supply the building blocks for creating them.

For growth hormone, thyroid hormone and testosterone there are 4 key nutrients you need:

• L - Tyrosine

• Iodine

• Selenium

• Cholesterol

Your thyroid uses iodine and L-Tyrosine to create thyroid hormone (that controls the flow of energy in your body).

It also needs selenium in the process.Without these 3 nutrients, your body can’t create thyroid hormone.

As a result — it literally can’t create energy.

This is all to say, they are pretty damn important.

This is how you get it into your diet:

• L-Tyrosine is found in meats, eggs and dairy products.

• Iodine is found in most table salts

• Selenium is found in liver and in shockingly high amounts in brazil nuts

Most people get enough Iodine and L-Tyrosine – but it’s still worth noting and examining your diet.

But a lot of people are deficient in selenium.

The nutrient responsible for your creation of energy.

It’s found in organ meats like liver (which also has a lot of other important nutrients) but a relatively small amount.

The heavy hitter is brazil nuts.

7 Brazil nuts contain up to 1000% more selenium than most selenium packed foods.

I have to note that eating nuts can be problematic because of compounds like linoleic acid.

But it may be worth experimenting with them if you have a hard time getting enough selenium in your diet.

Testosterone on the other hand, is created from cholesterol.

Get this in your diet through saturated animal fats like butter or tallow.

Contrary to popular belief, butter (and saturated foods in general) is a health food.

It improves your cell permeability, joints, mental function and a lot of other interesting things. I talk about this more in “How to fat without trying”. (Yes, I know I’ve already mentioned this. Just read it already).

Another important point is avoiding computer viruses.

We live in a dangerous world.

Especially when it comes to hormones.

There are a lot of compounds that, if consumed, will tear down your hormonal system.

You can think of these as “computer viruses” in your biological code.

The most common ones are estrogenics and phytoestrogens.

Estrogenics are found in plastic.

Phytoestrogens are found in plant foods such as flax seed, soy, beans and grains.

When these little rascals enter your body, they act as estrogen. Without going into too much detail, it causes the production of testosterone to go down.

This disrupts the entire ecosystem that is your body (yes, even if you’re female). It will cause your energy, libido, muscle mass, bone density, cognitive function, mood and overall health to plummet.

In today’s day and age, it’s almost impossible to escape completely from these compounds.

But there is a lot you can do to limit them:

• Avoid polyester clothes

• Use metallic water bottles

• Use glass containers for food

• Avoid plant-foods high in phytoestrogens (soy, beans, flax seeds, grains)

A little plastic won’t kill you, but if you care about your hormones – be mindful of this.

The 2nd step of writing better code is getting the right nutrients and avoiding computer viruses.

The 3rd step is learning how to sleep.

3. The Sleep Function

Sleep is the fundamental pillar of health.

It’s when the body is built and repaired. And it’s when a nifty little thing called growth hormone is released.

As mentioned, growth hormone codes the development of your body. But it also works in unison with thyroid hormone to control your metabolism and channeling of energy.

Growth hormone is essential for metabolism, building muscle and repairing damages and injuries.

And the way to increase it is through sleep.

In the early stages of deep sleep, your brain enters a state of delta waves.

These are huge waves of brain activity that stimulate the hormone glands of the brain (where hormone release is controlled).

The giant delta waves stimulate the release of a certain hormone that makes your liver  flood your brain and body with growth hormone.

This causes your metabolism to become healthier, muscle and bone structures to be built and pathways in your brain to become stronger.

More than growth hormone, sleep decreases the amount of cortisol in your body (the stress hormone).

Cortisol is the antagonist to testosterone and they’re in a way competing with each other.

Cortisol inhibits luteinizing hormone which is the messenger that tells your body to create testosterone.

To increase your levels of testosterone, you can’t have too much cortisol rushing through your body all the time.

This is one of the reasons sleep is so important for testosterone levels.

I’ve already gone deep into the subject of sleep in “how intelligent people use sleep”.

Read that letter & scroll down to “the 8 inner gates of sleep” and you’ll find a set system for getting a great night’s sleep.

Here’s a TLDR for getting a good night’s sleep:

• Be active throughout the day

• Don’t drink caffeine past 10 am

• Don’t eat or drink 2 hours before bed

• Get sunlight first thing in the morning

• Do some meditation or breathing exercise

The 4th bio command is getting a good night’s sleep.

The 4th is removing stress.

4. Return(Stress)

Stress is the enemy when it comes to optimizing hormones.

Moderate stress levels aren’t dangerous, they’re even important (as we talked about in the letter on how to get more energy).

But when you live life chronically stressed, you have so much cortisol in your blood that it overpowers all other hormones.

It shuts down the production of many hormones like testosterone and ramps up the activity of your whole body.

Because your body thinks you’re in a life or death situation, it decreases the amount of growth hormone, testosterone and thyroid hormone.

You don’t have time to build and strengthen your body – you need to flee!

This is why managing your stress levels is crucial for hormone optimization.

Here are some practices:

• Meditation

Sit down for 20 minutes a day at a specific time and focus on your breath.

Don’t control it.

Just watch it enter and leave your body.

Feel the air rushing through your nose, notice the swelling of your chest and underbelly as you listen to the in and out breath.

You don’t have to sit cross legged with your eyes closed to meditate.

You can do it anywhere.

All it is is the art of being.

Of accepting whatever is in the eternal now.

Anytime you don’t have to think about the future or past, move into the present and just enjoy life as it is – as it always will be.

You’ll realize that in the present moment, in the eternal now – there are no problems.

If you make this a habit – I guarantee you that stress won’t be a problem.

Another cool thing about meditation is that you can control the release of growth hormone.

When you’ve become quite efficient at meditating, you can access the delta waves we talked about at will.

This means that you can literally sit down, close your eyes and flood your body with growth hormone. This is simply mind blowing to me.

Anyways, start meditating.

• NSDR

NSDR is a form of meditation.

It involves lying on your back and feeling all the different parts of your body.

Many studies have shown that it decreases stress, improves your sleep and refuels your motivation reservoirs.

How to do this:

Search for NSDR on youtube, lie down and click play.

This is one of my favorites.

• Big picture philosophy

This is probably my favorite way of destressing.

It can be taken to extremes, but if you do it right – you enter a state of problem free bliss.

Put on a lecture on spirituality, buddhism, stoicism or any other big picture philosophy.

When I feel the walls closing in – I often put on a lecture by Alan Watts.

As I listen to the poetic flow of words, my mind begins to move up a level.

I start to see my situation for what it is and life starts to slowly make sense.

It’s gotten me out of a lot of seemingly hopeless situations.

Check this one out.

• Intense exercise

This one is counterintuitive.If you feel stressed, get even more stressed.

Do hard workout, sprints or sports.

This will free up your energy and drain the excess.

If you do exercise right, it will also produce a lot of endorphins, serotonin and growth hormones that will calm you down afterwards.

We need some hardships in our daily lives.

You can either choose a hard workout, or let your mind pick a small problem and blow it up beyond all proportions.

My recommendation: Choose exercise

The 4th bio command is decreasing stress levels.

The 5th bio command is leveraging sunlight.

5. The Sunlight Command

Light rules the body.

It controls the release of hormones like cortisol and melatonin while being essential to the creation of testosterone.

Sunlight as it relates to the body is very interesting.

No matter what – the sun has always risen and the sun has always fallen. It’s the one evolutionary constant we’ve evolved to.

And so it makes sense that it would be beneficial for optimizing the system of our health.

To understand how to optimize your hormones with the sunlight command – you need to understand a little bit about the eyes.

The eyes are not a separate organ, they are part of your brain protruding out of your skull.

When you take in sunlight through your eyes, you are directly stimulating your brain to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

You may remember cortisol as the stress chemical and developed an antagonistic stance against it.

But cortisol is crucial for your energy and life.

When you get sunlight in the early day, the cortisol ramps up your body’s activity.

Your mind becomes sharper and more energy is released.

Because of the laws of the Universe, the energy peak will fade off as the day continues.

This is extremely beneficial.

Why?

It allows you to move into deep and restorative sleep.

And as we’ve already gone over – sleep is essential for hormonal health.

When you peak your cortisol in the early day you also avoid having it slightly elevated through the whole day.

You get the energy benefits of cortisol without having to worry about decreasing your testosterone levels (as you may remember, cortisol is an antagonist to testosterone).

To take advantage of this:

• Get outside within 1 hour of waking

• Take a walk and look in the direction of the sun

• Do this for:

  • 10 minutes on bright days

  • 20 minutes on overcast days

  • 30 minutes on really overcast days

Another point for sunlight is the creation of vitamin D.

Vitamin D which is critical for the creation of testosterone and other bodily functions.

The problem is that most people are deficient in it.

It is possible to get some vitamin D from food but it’s very difficult.

It is for this reason that a lot of health organizations promote taking vitamin D as a supplement.

But there is one giant problem with this.

The vitamins and minerals in supplements are often not particularly “bio available”.

Meaning, even if you get enough vitamin D from supplements, your body can’t fully use it.

This begs the question, why not just get vitamin D as we’ve gotten it through our whole evolution – through the sun?

Not only does the sun facilitate the creation of Vitamin D but it also increases the levels of testosterone surging through our bodies.

Just take a look at this study. 

It shows the importance of sunlight for optimizing hormones.

Living in Scandinavia, the fact that sunlight is such an important factor for health and hormones can be a bit irritating.

During the winter, the whole country is often covered in thick clouds and the sun is up for a meek 5 hours.

There is a reason why people in northern countries experience more depression and mood disorders during the winter months.

If you live in a northern country (or just have terrible weather conditions), there is one thing that might save you.

Salmon.

100 grams of salmon contains more than the daily required intake of vitamin D.

The fact that it's meat means that it’s much more bio available than supplements. (Which makes it a great alternative when the sky is gray for 6 months…)

Note: A lot of fish contain heavy metals that are extremely harmful to your body.

If you're going to eat salmon on the daily – you need to be mindful of where you’re getting it. Search for wild caught fish from lakes that aren’t exposed to environmental toxins.

It’s tedious.

But it's worth it.

The 5th commandment is getting enough sunlight  through your eyes and skin.

The 6th bio command is using exercise.

6. The Workout Function

Working out is the most fun thing you can do that is also essential for hormonal health.

And if you work out in a specific way – you can maximize the release of growth hormone and testosterone.

Studies have shown that when you warm up, stay physically warm, workout intensively for 60 - 75 minutes and finally cool down quickly – you release the most amount of growth hormone.

• Warm up with some light cardio for 10 minutes

• Through your workout, wear a hoodie and warm pants

• Keep going for 60 - 75 minutes and then stop

• Get outside, cool down and enjoy the boost in growth hormone

Another study found that if you perform 1 - 3 compound movements, 10 reps, 3 sets with 80% of your one repetition maximum, with 2 minute rest intervals and done 2 days a week – testosterone goes through the roof.

This is an incredible finding.

However, a lot of gym enthusiasts (myself included) don’t want to sacrifice workouts for just 3 compound movements.

But even then…

You can still take advantage of this:

• Choose 2 workouts a week that you’ll dedicate to this

• Cut some isolation movements (bicep curls, tricep extensions etc.)

• Do 3 sets, 10 reps with 80% of your one repetition max with 2 minutes of rest

You don’t have to go all in, but by changing up your workouts a little, you can take advantage of the increase in testosterone.

This will boost your recovery, motivation and performance during your other workouts.

Before we close the final bio command, we have to clear one essential point.

Overtraining.

I love working out.

But I also love going balls to the walls when I do it.

Training hard and close to failure is important — but only if you do it intelligently.

When you continuously train to failure every workout you start to reverse your progress.

Any training will release cortisol – but afterwards you usually recover from it and then some. The problem with overtraining is that you never recover. You live in a state of stress and exhaustion.

This causes your growth hormone, thyroid hormone and testosterone to tank.

You can do every other bio command right, but if you still redline your body too often — it doesn’t matter.

When you reach the state of overtraining, life starts going downhill:.

• You’re no longer progressing in weight or reps

• You no longer want to work out

• You’re no longer able to enjoy life

The solution is to periodize your training.

Every 4th week, you should take a deload where you either go ridiculously light in the gym, or skip it entirely.

I can’t stress how important this is.

I would strongly urge you to read the letter from 2 weeks ago that goes deep into this “how to build more muscle (and find meaning in life)”.

With that being said, the 6th and final bio command leads:

“Use exercise for improving growth hormone and testosterone while avoiding overtraining.”

You are the programmer of your life.

The code is your hormones and your commands are:

• Calories

• Nutrients

• Sleep

• Stress management

• Sunlight

• Exercise

By becoming aware of how your daily actions are programming you — you gain the ability to write the program that runs your life.

You remove the limit on your potential and unlock energy for the things that actually matter.

Now, go and write some amazing code.

That’s it for this week.

If you enjoyed this, press the button down below to not miss out on future letters.

Read through the previous letter if you’re still curious and I’ll see you in the next one.

PEACE.

-Simon